I am a Grenade

o   “The concept of the teenager rests in turn on the idea of the adolescent as a not quite competent person, beset by stress and hormones.”  (Hine 4)

o   “the difficulty of adolescent development is exaggerated, as few teens are moodier than adults, few are deliberately oppositional and few have an identity crisis while still living at home” (Raby 432)

·          “Teens” are valid human beings with valid experiences

o   Adolescence is not a “stage” separate from the person experiencing it

o   Perspective is key

o   The idea of “The Storm” normalizes and diminishes the importance of actual emotional turmoil that comes along with existing in this world

o   “Youth are perceived always in terms of what they are becoming, rather than what they are being:  they are potential, not yet fully formed” (Raby 433)

o   “So maybe people are like, just skeptical of you all the time.  They don’t really listen to your opinion really, they don’t think that you know yet, and they don’t think that you’ve experienced enough” (Raby 433)

o   “Teenage behavior can be dismissed as ‘a phase’ and ‘a temporary problem’” (Raby 434)

o   “Child and teen desires, ideas, and experiences may be consequently dismissed as irrational” (Raby 434).

·         To be Othered is to be Marginalized

o   “Adolescence is discursively framed as a stage that seems to require a degree of self-reflection, it is also marginalized (in terms of voice and self-reflection) and often laced with current, popular concern about adolescents as dangerous, ungoverned and in need of control” (Raby 430)

o   “when adolescence is framed as a predictable life stage, it also homogenizes a diverse and unequal group of people” (Raby 425)

o   “Discourses of becoming negate diversity” (Raby 434)

o   “by characterizing adolescence as turbulent and emotional stage, adulthood is framed as rational, calm, ‘evolved’ and knowing.  Adolescents become as an entire social group that cannot effectively know themselves, whose legitimate grievances may therefore be silenced, and who need protection from their own instability.” (Raby 432-433)